Examination of mutant tomatoes has lead scientists to identify how the plant’s skin is assembled.

Identifying the utility of the CD1 enzyme in building the cutin (skin) polymer helped researchers find gene sequences that are closely related to the tomato CD1 gene across the land plant kingdom, including mosses, which are close relatives of some of the first land plants.

The findings suggest the evolution of enzymes similar to CD1 paved the way for the cuticle and enabled colonisation of land by plants more than 400m years ago.